Lady Dinos suffer first loss of season

With three of the top ranked teams in the state having already met up this pre-season and trading wins and losses like knock-out punches in a title bout, it is easy to see that 3A girls basketball is going to be a wild ride all season long.

Early this season, Carbon met up with Morgan and stunned them with a dominant win. Then Morgan and Wasatch tangled with Morgan coming out on top. Friday night saw top ranked Carbon and Wasatch going at it. This time it was Wasatch declared the winner, 54-44, at the end of the contest.

The Friday night game started out with both teams playing tough, aggressive ball. At the end of the first quarter, the Wasps held a two point advantage but the Dinos cut the lead to one by the end of the half after holding a lead and then giving it up. Neither team seemed willing to fold.

But in the third, Carbon's shots could not find the hole, tended to clunk off the rim and suddenly they were in a very strange place for this year's undefeated team. They found themselves trailing. It seemed to unnerve the squad and they just couldn't get it rolling again. Turnovers and bad shot selection made the small deficit balloon to more than ten points. And in the end it was all Wasatch.

The Dinos shot a paltry 20 percent in the second half of play. It was the final minutes that saw a spark of the team from games past as they forced three Wasp turnovers to pull themselves back within ten.

Patricia Smith was named the Carbon player of the game with 14 points and four steals. Julia Potts fought for 10 rebounds and was awarded the Dino garbage player of the game for her hustle.

A cheerless group filed out of the team room after hearing from their coach. Carlson was equally somber as she summed up the game, "Wasatch shot close to 60 percent in the first half and that's hard to beat. In the second half we panicked, the girls are not used to being down and it took us out of our game. Some of the girls tried to do it all themselves, stopped running the plays and began to make mistakes. It was a wake-up call that maybe we are not as good as we thought and still have some work to do. Its time to push it at every practice and get ready for what's ahead. We are not undefeated overall now, but we still think we can go undefeated through region and take the state title."

The girls head north to Grantsville this Tuesday for one last pre-season tune-up before region play. The Cowboys will be another tough test for the Lady Dinos and they are looking to bounce back and return to the business of winning.